1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the manufacture of semiconductor devices, and particularly to the removal of damage or contamination, especially oxide containing contamination, from a semiconductor substrate, and the growth of extremely high quality oxide films during the manufacture of a semiconductor device. More particularly, the present invention is directed to improved methods for removing contamination and damage from a substrate, and for growing contamination- and defect-free oxide films on a substrate, by in situ rapid thermal etch and rapid thermal oxidation.
2. The Relevant Technology
Many of the steps performed in the manufacture of semiconductor devices require that contamination or damage be removed from a silicon substrate. The various processes typically used to remove contamination or damage generally may be classed as wet cleaning methods or dry cleaning methods. Wet cleaning of various types can introduce many types of contamination. Placing the substrate in contact with liquids tends to result in particulate contamination of the substrate. Dry cleaning methods employing plasma energy or similar energy sources can substantially avoid causing particulate contamination, but can cause lattice damage to the substrate. Dry cleaning methods without plasma or similar energy sources to assist the cleaning processes can avoid damage to the substrate, but are typically too slow for cost-effective manufacturing.
Deposition of extremely high-quality oxide films is also generally required in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, such as in deposition of gate oxides in state of the art field-effect transistors. Production of such extremely-high quality oxide films requires that the substrate be contamination-free and damage-free.
Effective, high-throughput cleaning methods resulting in a contamination-free and damage-free substrate are thus needed.